you see what nancy pelosi said, what john boehner has been saying. then you go back to the president's press conference taking a pretty tough decisive tone on susan rice and then you look at what's happening and also his position on the tax increases. take all of that together, it looks like more of the same. do you sense and from your reporting are we just having people circle each other or are their feet in stone? >> i think there's still some areas where people can get to the right place. the two things i keep thinking about is the business community, i think, what steve says is exactly right. it seems like from the outside, what they want more than anything is certainty. it's not just moment to moment. it's minute to minute. it's crisis to crisis. and that is an atmosphere that's not conclusive towards optimal economic activity. this notion of trying to get to long-term stability but not having short-term austerity measures would be too depressed on consumer activity seems like where we need to end up and a lot of pressure from republicans to the